


Interlude: Saturn

by TheQueen



Series: There is No Sex Ed in Space [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Childhood, Childhood Memories, Fluff and Angst, Gen, His parents are the best!, How Shiro Grew Up, Meeting the Parents, Minor Character Death, Mother-Son Relationship, Shiro Big Bang (2017), Shiro is a Mess, Shiro's childhood is complicated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-02
Updated: 2017-11-02
Packaged: 2019-01-28 16:14:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12610536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheQueen/pseuds/TheQueen
Summary: How Takashi Shirogane learned to love space and the family that helped him do it.





	Interlude: Saturn

 

If you were to ask him ten years down the road, fifteen even, who he was and how he came about being who he was, he could say with utmost faith that he wouldn’t know how to answer that question. He certainly doesn’t know how to answer that question now, wrapped up in the smoke of the prince’s small den, the smell of incense and sweets and the aromatics of fresh flowers hanging heavy in the air.

“It’s a simple question,” the prince states, “with no simple answer.”

Shiro is inclined to agree, raising his glass for a refill and then a toast as he has seen the others do again and again in the great hall outside this room and down the hall with two rights, where the rest of his team sits pleasantly full and slightly drunk on the juice they pour freely into golden mugs. He does not have a golden mug. His is made of stone.

“Then why ask it?” he says after taking a long drink.

The prince grins, sets the large stone mug down and turns to tend the fire.

Most of the things in the Prince’s room are made of stone, a sharp contrast from the rest of the luxury of the Castle. And, admittedly, when the Prince had asked him halfway through the dance for a quiet moment, drinking and talking hadn’t been what Shiro had intended on agreeing to. But he does not find it disagreeable.

Rather he just feels warm.

It had been a long and well-fought battle that had lead to the feast that had lead him here - to the Prince. A battle with far more casualties than he had anticipated.  The Galra, this Prince Lotor, is far more clever than he and Allura had given him credit. Usually, Shiro was quite good at guessing the amount of coffins they’d be building. And how depressing it all was…

Warm isn’t a bad thing after all that.

“Who are you, Black Paladin?” the Prince says, turning back to Shiro, a large red ember held in his tongs that he places in a bowl of sweet water on the table. “My people know you as a fighter and a champion. And as a leader. But you do not strike me as a leader.”

Shiro supposes that is fair. “I never wanted to be a leader,” Shiro laughs, punch drunk. “I.. I wanted to do something wonderful, you know? When I was a kid, I decided I wanted to do something I love.

“And you love fighting?” the Prince says, taking his seat across the table.

“I never liked violence,” Shiro admits. “ I didn’t want to be a fighter… I-I wanted to be an explorer.”

“An explorer,” the prince smiles. “That is a lofty goal. And so you came to space to explore and now…”

“No,” Shiro clarifies. “I didn’t come to space to explore. Well… I did… But really I came because of my Mama…”

 

.

This is what he tells the Prince.

.

His parents divorce when he is six.

His parents fought and fought often. Even after his mother moved out, they would fight on the phone. Takashi was born to young parents, to an unloving mother and a fairly kind father. It is an explanation, not an excuse.

When he turns eighteen and graduates top of his class with a promising career in space travel for one of the most prestigious space programs in the world, his mother admits with the kind of honesty born only of midnight that she regrets her absence from his life.

"You were a good kid," she says plainly, in the same brisk matter Takashi knew his father to be prone to when stressed. People of few words. "You should have had more from me."

Below them the sounds of his graduation party swell while they hide away on the second floor balcony, the noise of summer muted as they look out over the neighborhood he had grown up in. This was a house she had never lived in. "I had Mama," Takashi offers, equal parts reassurance and reminder.

"That you did," she smiles before leaving him to stargaze as she returns to the party.

His mama is… He’d never been close to his birth mother. She had left him, would always leave him behind. Her regret at having given birth at twenty-one was clear; her fear of “doing nothing with her life” prominent. She had never been cruel to him. She had never neglected him when it came to food or shelter or things. She had simply never loved him. She’d given up all custody the minute she could, packed up her things long before his parents finalized their divorce. So it has really just been his father and him for as long as he can remember.

And then his father brings his Mama home.

.

Their first meeting is good.

He is ambivalent when his father announces nervously over dinner that he is bringing a woman home to meet him. He’s eight. His father has been dating on and off for some time now but Takashi has never thought much of it. Women are not the focus of his life and he doesn’t think he needs a mother.

He has his father and a house. He has friends and school and video games and sports and likes climbing trees and making a ruckus and is on track developmentally and all that stuff they say good boys should do and be. He doesn’t need a mom.

Even if his dad insists he does.

He’s just bought the new Mario game and is agonizingly stuck on a rather simple level. It's embarrassing. His friends have plans to make a gaming channel together like the game grumps (his father doesn’t know or understand YouTube so he's gotten away with watching all sorts of things he normally wouldn't be able to) and he needs the practice so he can play like them.

So in some ways he's annoyed his dad's date is going to cut into his practice time.

When she arrives -- ten agonizing minutes late during which his father fusses and frets and hovers by both his phone and the door until even Shiro is beginning to feel nervous -- his dad introduces her as Aana. She’s dressed in stars: a star patterned dress, star shaped earrings and a series of star shaped bracelets on her left arm. She then she tells him she works for NASA.

“Do you like space?” she asks as a conversation starter. They’re alone in the living room and Shiro snuggles into his favorite corner of the sofa where he can perfectly see the other couch and the TV (off for now) and the windows facing the front yard. She sits straight backed against the sofa, the folds of her dress carefully arranged over her knees. His father has gone to the kitchen to grab drinks or snacks or both.

Takashi shrugs. “Probably?” he offers. He remembers distinctly loving stars once. He still has the posters up in his room and a few remaining glow-in-the-dark star stickers on his ceiling that refuse to fall off. But he’s sure everyone goes through a space phace just like they go through a dinosaur or medieval knight phase.

Though, he wouldn’t mind being a space explorer. “I just saw Star Wars,” he admits, a bit embarrassed. A lot of his friends have already seen it but his dad had insisted he wasn’t old enough until now. “I wouldn’t mind being Obi Wan Kenobi and getting to see space like that. All…” he gestures with his hands, miming silent explosives while she laughs.

“I love that movie. But I remember wanting to be Han Solo.” She smiles.

Takashi shrugs. “The only cool thing about Han is he gets to kiss the Princess. Obi Wan Kenobi is smarter and better and cooler. He’s everybody’s mentor and he’s the guy everyone goes to when everything gets bad.” He had this conversation with Brandon over lunch the other day so he feels well prepared to argue if necessary.

She thinks about this for a moment and then nods. ”Yeah but Han gets to fly. Have you ever thought about flying?”

Takashi shrugs. _Not… really._ “I don’t think I’d hate it?”

She smiles and accepts the drink from his dad when he returns from the kitchen with a plate of jalapeno poppers. Takashi wastes no time grabbing four. Aana takes a sip of her drink, thanks his dad, and turns her attention to Takashi. ”Why is Han cool because he got to kiss Leia?”

Takashi blushes, suddenly feeling rather shy. He hesitates and looks at his dad while twisting the fringe of the pillow around and around his finger. His dad smiles encouragingly. “Um…” Takashi bites his lip, ”Because she’s like… the coolest.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah!” Brandon had insisted Leia was boring, but Brandon could be pretty dumb sometimes even if he was good at video games. “She’s a princess! She gets to run the rebellion and fight the bad guys and she can use the force like Luke but she doesn’t have to because she’s already doing so much for the rebellion!”

He wrinkles his nose. “No one ever thinks about how much she has to do because the movies are dumb and only focus on Luke. But she’s a _princess_.” He looks at his dad and grins when he sees his dad smiling.

“Plus, she always has the best hair,” his dad encourages, probably remembering the several hours Takashi had considered growing out his hair just so he could have cool hair buns too.

“She is very pretty,” Aana agrees.

“I like her hair,” Takashi confesses.

Aana leans close and sets her glass on the table so her star bracelet clinks against the glass. “Me too.”

Okay… maybe dinner won’t be as boring as he thought it would be.

.

“My mama taught me to love space,” Shiro whispers as he lets himself sprawl across the pillows on the floor of the den. “She taught me to love a lot of things… Though,” he laughs and closes his eyes. “I hadn’t realized it at the time…”

.

His dad and Aana have been dating for a year when she decides to move in. There were lots of conversations about it, both with Takashi and without. Still… he doesn’t understand the fuss. She’s cool and she does cool things. NASA, putting people in space; it’s hard to think of that as _boring,_ really.

The day before Aana moves in, Dad makes them spring clean and then deep clean every inch of the house. Takashi is certain his house hasn’t been this clean since before he was born. The whole place smells like bleach and lemon. He complains thoroughly to Brandon and Lex the next day about how his hands will never smell the same again.

“But aren’t you excited,” Lex grins, slipping the last of her corn onto Brandon’s plate when he isn’t looking. The regular hustle and bustle of the lunchroom forces them all to speak just a little too loud. “New mom. New life style. All this change has got to be like… crazy right? Are you excited?”

Brandon had commented once when he came over way back in the beginning of their friendship that it was weird he didn't have a mom. Takashi had shrugged, unconcerned.

Brandon’s mom was a strict, no-nonsense working woman who spent every nine-to-five out of the house before coming home at six sharp if she could. Her hair was always pulled tight into a blonde ponytail. “Law,” she had remarked once to her husband while Brandon and Takashi had been content playing video games in the corner of the living room, “is not made for people who like to sleep.”

Brandon had complained once or twice in the quiet of a sleepover night that he missed his mom more days than not. “It’s good when she gets vacations,” Brandon told him. “But sometimes it doesn’t feel like she’s really here.” He’d then been quick to argue, “Like her work is important and I know she’s helping her clients. But sometimes I just miss her ya know?”

Takashi, rather comfortable with the idea of absent mothers, had reached out for a hug. “Yeah, I understand.”

Now Takashi shrugs. “I mean… I don’t know… She’s not awful...”

“Have you even, like, lived with a Mom before?” Brandon asks before noticing the extra corn on his plate. “Lex!”

“It tastes wet and slimy and you like it,” Lex argues, shielding her tray with her hand.

“Yeah but you could just leave it on your plate…” Brandon grumbles, poking at the corn before adding it, as he always does, to his rice.

“Yeah… I think so?” Takashi shrugs, glancing down the hall of tables to where a group of kids were starting to get louder and louder. “My dad has photos and stuff. But I don’t think that counts… Either way we’ve gotten along well without a mom for forever. And I don’t think Aana really wants to be my mom. I think she just wants to date my dad.”

“Has she said that?” Lex asks, concerned.

“No…” Takashi frowns and leans back when he notices one of the kids from earlier holding their tray like they were going to throw it. “I guess I just don’t think it matters. I don’t need a mom.”

“Dude… your birth mom is kind of a bitch,” Brandon grumbles somewhat out of the blue.

Lex agrees. “Though don’t call her a bitch.”

Takashi looks at her just as the first set of peas launches into the air. “I don’t really know her.”

“Yeah,” Lex snorts. “That’s the problem.”

Whatever further conversation they could have had is interrupted by the potatoes that land in Brandon’s hair.

Aana arrives that afternoon carrying three boxes, two suitcases and a variety of poster tubes. Takashi is starting to figure out that stars are a theme for her from the clips in her hair. “Well,” she says, panting slightly after setting the last of her boxes in his dad’s room, “this will be interesting, won’t it?”

When his dad pulls her in for a kiss, Takashi pretends not to be grossed out.

Living with Aana is a learning curve. It’s not as awful as Brandon predicts it could be when Takashi admits he’s nervous one day after school on the ride back after a week of Aana living with them.

“Girl’s can be weird,” Brandon says. “When my brother brought his fiancee to live with us she was so, like, loud and had a ton of stuff and liked weird stuff. But that doesn’t mean that they’re like evil.”

“I don’t think Aana is evil,” Takashi defends. “I just… We have a system.”

Brandon’s stop comes and he grabs his bag by their feet. “Give her a chance, Kashi. You might like living with her.”

And so… Takashi gives her a chance.

After all, Brandon isn’t wrong about girls. Aana is loud:

It’s something he notices early on, as early as the very next day after she moves in. It’s not that she screams or makes a lot of noise. She talks as softly as his father, voice ever-gentle and yet commanding. She was the kind of person he wanted to listen to even if he didn’t always understand what she was talking about.

No the real noise--the loudness--came from her music. Which she played every second of every minute of every day.

“I didn’t know that much music existed,” Takashi mumbles one day to his dad as Aana changes the channel on the radio to “some background music” during dinner.

His dad just laughs, ruffled his hair and tells him it’s good he is listening to anything beyond pop music. “Not like I could ever get you to enjoy classics,” he jokes.

Takashi scowls, “That’s because your music is boring.”

Every now and then she reminds him, “You can tell me to make it quieter,” usually after she’s played her latest obsession at least six times as she types away on her computer.

Takashi nods as he starts rinsing his dishes, the lyrics of the chorus repeating. “It’s not bad,” Takashi says. “I’ve never heard it before.”

“That’s because your father is an old man,” she laughs, lowering the top of her laptop as the song tapers off into a wild guitar solo. “I don’t think he listens to anything post-1980s.”

“Yeah,” Takashi wrinkles his nose, remembering the variety of long drives they’ve been on. “Unless it’s Japanese.”

She walks over to the ipod dock and begins scrolling through as her last song fades out. “Okay if you liked that, you’re going to love this.”

Three hours later he finds himself lying on the floor of their living room listening to 90s existentialism when his dad comes home.

Aana has a ton of stuff:

Takashi has gotten used to collecting all her things and putting them back on the table when she gets busy or sidetracked, because otherwise he ends up knocking them on the floor. He’d done that and broken a lipstick during the third week she’d moved in. Aana hadn’t been upset, instead she’d been rather apologetic. But Takashi had still felt awful seeing that bright red smear in the trash can for the next two days.

Admittedly, he can’t stop thinking about it for a while. He knows girls get to wear make up. He tends to fast-forward past the makeup ads of strange women posing at the camera and winking their eyes like he’s supposed to understand some hidden meaning. But outside of malls when they walk through the department store to get to the parking lot he’s never paid much attention to it. Then one day, as he watches Aana apply the eyeshadow along her eyelid, he gets curious enough to pick up a black pencil and nearly stabs his eyes out.

Aana laughs, “Would you like me to show you?”

It’s honestly one of the strangest things Takashi had ever subjected himself too. Far too long having to sit still and close his eyes and open his eyes on command as Aana pressed a variety of soft and hard things to his eyelids and cheeks and eyebrows. But it’s worth it for the moment--thirty minutes later after she’d started and after she’d already wiped off her first two attempts--when he finally gets to look at himself in the mirror.

Saying he likes it is an understatement.

Unfortunately, it didn’t take him long to figure out why Aana had to try twice. Makeup is hard. If coloring inside the lines is hard and cutting straight lines in paper is harder than makeup is the ultimate arts and crafts.

The first thing he struggles with is the eyeliner.

“Eyeshadow might be easier,” Aana suggests one day after school when he’s grabbed the eye-pencil from her purse and is working on keeping his hand steady as he peers through one eye at his right eyelid.

Takashi smears the edge and huffs, sitting back against the sofa. “Why is this so hard?”

“You’re putting something sharp near your eye,” Aana explains. “And you’re not sure you won’t poke yourself.”

Takashi pouts and stares at himself in the mirror as the chorus of his new favorite song swells to its chorus. “I’m not scared.”

“I never said you were,” Aana says calmly, turning away from her computer. “You just have to remember you’re not going to hurt yourself.”

Takashi takes a deep breath and tries again.

The first time he gets anything near decent it’s too thick and square on the edges, nothing like the thin line Aana could paint on, but he’s too proud to care. It’s even. Almost. Pretty much even anyway. When his dad gets home, he runs downstairs after saving his homework to show off.

There’s an odd moment when his dad freezes when he sees him before he looks to Aana as he stands, hands on his hips and chin pointed out to show off the thick black lines on the top of his eyelid before his dad smiles and ruffles his hair. “You look fantastic! The prettiest I’ve ever seen.”

Takashi blushes and grins, “I can do better.”

“I’m sure you can,” his dad promises. “How long have you been practicing?”

“A week,” Takashi admits, a bit embarrassed. “I’m not super good at it and Aana does it weird.”

“Well,” his dad says, throwing his coat and his backpack on the sofa as they walk into the living room, Aana’s papers and laptop shoved precariously to the edge of the coffee table. His dad has had a super late day at the office and Aana is already on the phone ordering pizza. “Have you tried looking at the way other people put on makeup?”

“Where would I do that?” Takashi asks.

“Youtube,” his dad reminds him, laughing at how comically wide Takashi’s eyes grow. “I’m not so old I don’t know there aren’t tutorials on Youtube.”

Takashi is embarrassed to admit he’d forgotten people but tutorials on Youtube. It doesn’t take him long to find a Japanese youtuber with eye’s like his and a tutorial on how to put on “eyeliner.” After that make up just gets easier. It isn’t long until Aana gifts him with his own set of colored pencils and eyeshadows and lipglosses (his dad said he was too young for lipsticks). After that it wasn’t rare to see Takashi walking around the house on the weekends with full face.

And then one day he thinks he’s done well enough to wear it to school. Brandon takes a while to notice, halfway to the school bus before he compliments Takashi on his eyeshadow. “But isn’t it annoying having to wait for them to finish putting them on?” Brandon asks. “I hate it when my mom makes me wear makeup.” He wrinkles his nose as if remembering an unpleasant smell.

Takashi shrugs and looks at himself in the window of the bus.

“It looks good,” Lex tells him when he slips into class. The bus delayed an unfortunate ten minutes because of traffic. They’re working in groups to complete a math sheet. “I didn’t know you liked make up.”

Takashi smiles. “Aana showed me. It’s like intense arts and crafts.”

Lex pouts. “I can never get mine to look that good.” She draws a swirl on the corner of her math sheet and adds, “My mom says the trick is practice.”

“Yeah,” Takashi admits, stretching out over the length of his desk so his chin rests on the cold plastic, their math sheet long completed as the teacher went around checking on the other students’ work. “I’ve been practicing for a month now and I only got sort of good after my dad helped me find some good youtube videos.”

“Your dad lets you wear make up?” Helen asks, leaning over, her own worksheet clearly flipped over. “My mom says I have to be at least sixteen to wear lipgloss.”

Takashi shrugs. “My dad is really cool with it. He said he’ll take me to the mall over the weekend so I can pick up some nail polish.”

“Nailpolish?” Lex asks.

“I saw this woman with sparkly nails,” Takashi grins holding his hand up imagining the way the sparkles would reflect off the light. “They looked like lil’ galaxies.”

“That’s soooo coool,” Helen groans. “I want to do that!”

“I want to too!” Lex cries. “We should get matching nails.”

Sanjay cuts in. “Isn’t it weird for a boy to wear make up?”

Helen rolls her eyes. “Don’t be lame, Jay.”

“I’m just saying,” Sanjay pouts. “I never see guys wearing make up.”

“That’s not true,” Shruthi argues, poking her brother in the shoulder. “All the actors wear make up in the bollywood movies. Remember Mama complained they made men look too pretty and then threw popcorn at dad.”

Sanjay thinks about it for a moment before nodding. “Does that mean you’re an actor now?”

Takashi shrugs, “I don’t know. I’ve never thought about being an actor.” He thinks about it for a moment and asks, “How do you become an actor?”

“Being an actor sounds cool,” Lex sighs dreamily. “I bet you’d get to go to Hollywood and meet all the famous people!”

“But then won’t you be a famous person?” Shruthi asks, pulling her pigtails out and slowly braiding them. “Would it be as exciting?”

“Well maybe I wouldn’t be as famous?” Lex wonders.

“Or what if you’re more famous,” Takashi suggests. “And they want your autograph?”

“I think I’d die of embarrassment,” Helen admits. “Imagine all that attention.”

“I think that’d be amazing,” Lex says. “Who wouldn’t want the attention if you were famous!”

Helen shakes her head. “No way not me. There has to be better things to fame then attention.”

Lex cries, “But isn’t that the point of fame?”

Sanjay pulls out his notebook, “We can decide this logically.”

By the time Mrs. Porter manages to regain the attention of the class, the period is almost over and most of the students are split between the pros and cons of fame.

(Three weeks later Takashi has a sleepover and Aana paints all of their nails like little galaxies.)

And Aana is weird:

It’s one of the first things Takashi notices about her early on. She’s weirdly attentive even though she’s looking after somebody else’s kid. It becomes normal to step off the school bus three months in and see her -- hair tied up, favorite star earrings twinkling in the sunlight -- waiting for him. When he gets home from school she fixes him a snack of cut fruit and cheese and a glass of water and then goes back to whatever project or email she’s working on. When he’s done, he usually has an hour to relax or do homework or take a nap before Mrs. Porter comes over and it is time for soccer.  He isn’t used to having someone around to take care of him when his dad is still at work other than the Mrs. Scholar who’d pop her head in every now and then, but it’s kinda nice.

So he starts returning the favor.

It doesn’t take long for Takashi to notice she works all the time. Unlike his dad who works during the day and always does his best to come home at six pm, Aana works from home -- finally turning his birth mom’s old art studio into an office, though most of the time he finds her sitting in the kitchen or the living room.

It takes even less time for him to grow worried. At first it’s just a new staple of life. But then he starts noticing that she tends not to move for a few hours at a time. And then he notices she sometimes… forgets to eat? When he mentions it to his dad in passing while they’re out getting groceries, his dad admits that it’s worrying. “But she’s a grown woman, Takashi,” his dad reminds him. “And it’s her work. I can mention it if you want but she knows what she needs to do.”

But it doesn’t sit right with him. Too much work isn’t good, just like too much play. Takashi’s only eight and even he knows that.

So he starts… interfering.

At first he just sort of… leaves food near her. A few apple slices. The last of his afternoon snack. A pudding cup. He leaves it by her desk or her papers before going to his room to do homework or outside to play with his friends. If she notices, she doesn’t say anything.

When it isn’t enough, he asks her what she’s doing.

The first time, she seems surprised and then delightful. Her explanation, excited and complicated, is interesting. Space is a lot more complicated than Star Wars. While she waits for her “models” to update, she points out a variety of interesting factors in her data, things that tend to go over his head. Then she starts making lessons out of it. Who knew Space could be so terrifying?

(Also, time makes no sense???)

“Everyone,” she says one day during one of their lessons about what gravity really is, “wants us to get to Mars. A colony on Mars. A home outside of Earth.” She shrugs and turns back to her computer. “The truth is there are a lot more interesting things than putting more bodies in space. I… I want us to go faster.”

“Do you want to fly up there?” Takashi asks, peeling the last of the orange skin off and handing her half.

She accepts it happily and starts pulling the white string off the edges. “Once… But I wasn’t made for flying, I suppose. The math ended up being more than enough for me.”

Takashi frowns and takes a bite of his orange slice. “I think I’d like to fly if I could… I think I’d like to see Earth from space.”

“Seeing Earth from space huh… Did you know we’ve got live streams of astronauts in space?” she says, opening up a new tab. “Take a look at this.”

And yeah… Takashi can admit -- staring past the slight glare of the sun on the screen at the recording of blue-blue and white swirls of color contrasted against a black, endless backdrop -- he can understand why someone would dedicate their lives for a view like that...

So yeah… Brandon was right. She isn’t awful. He likes her music. He likes her stuff. And he’s starting to understand her love of space.  And what is really, really important -- arguably the most important thing -- is his dad smiles more with her in the house.

When his dad comes home from work, stressed and annoyed at his boss (“Tim”) and his coworkers, he doesn’t stew in his bedroom anymore. Instead he shouts and snaps and rants to Aana, and sometimes Takashi when it isn’t “big people conversation time,” until he’s smiling and laughing again. Sometimes he event lets Takashi practice nails and eyebrows on him even when he’s sleepy, smiling the whole time. And… and he gives longer hugs.

The other big change is Aana’s friends start coming by, older people like his dad’s age or younger around Aana’s age. They’re cool; most of them are also space people. They have long and late parties, sometimes going well past Shiro’s weekend bedtime (sometimes if they go on for long enough and his dad is in a really good mood Shiro can even stay up past his bedtime and watch TV in his dad’s room!). He realizes, for the first time, he’s never really seen his dad hang out with adults his age other than his friends’ parents. Sure he went out sometimes but he’s never brought anyone home before… Not before Aana…

He starts wondering if his dad had been lonely before Aana. Certainly he’s happier now. Takashi has never thought of his dad as lonely before but he guesses it makes sense. And it would explain why his dad smiles more. It was nice, probably, to have someone to come home to that wasn’t your kid. Not that… Takashi is jealous. Lex had suggested it the night they’d done their nails for the first time, three pairs of glittery hands twinkling in the light of his totoro nightlight. “It’s not jealousy,” Takashi whispers. “I’m… happy.”

“You know your dad isn’t trying to replace you right?” Brandon asks.

Takashi smiles. “I know. I just… I don’t want my dad to be lonely. If I only ever hung out with adults I think I’d be lonely.”

Lex and Brandon are silent for a moment and Takashi adds. “Maybe I don’t need a mom… But maybe my dad needs a wife.”

So Takashi does his best to make it work. Aana makes his dad happy so he’ll make Aana happy.

Simple.

.

“So Aana,” the prince summarizes. “Is your mother?”

The fire is slowly dying down, the dimmer embers casting sharp shadows along the Prince’s jaw and Shiro nods, less sleepy and less drunk but still content. His eyes burn as he thinks of his mama, of the times they had and the times…

He takes a deep breath. “I didn’t think of her as a mother for a long time. Not until she’d been living with us for about a year and…”

.

The day his mother came back was one of the strangest days of his entire life.

He doesn’t really remember his mother. He hadn’t been lying when he’d said he didn’t really know her. Sometimes she calls, brief phone calls every three or six or eight months. Sometimes she stops by for milestones: birthdays or achievements. When he’d turned nine, she sent him a british copy of the sixth Harry Potter book which was pretty cool. But he hasn’t seen her since the day he’d graduated kindergarten -- she’d been there to give him a card and a teddy bear and to pose for a few photos.

So to see her here and now at their front door, dressed in a pair of buisness heels and slacks and a straight white tank top while his dad finishes cooking lunch in the kitchen and Aana is blasting her entire Queen collection because Takashi’s “musical education is severely lacking and she’s sorry to have failed him for so long” is shocking to say the least. And then she says, “Takashi, can I speak with your father?”

He nods dumbly, pointing towards the kitchen where he can hear his father calling out to Aana in Japanese, _“Do you want one egg or two?”_

Aana calls back, her pronunciation growing better over time, _“Two please.”_

Part of Takashi, a large part, wishes he could take it back. He watches her numbly walk into the house--heels off--as he lets the door slam shut behind him and wishes he was big enough to make her leave. _You don’t belong here._

It’s a bitter thought. It’s… annoyance and resentment and… and… anger. It’s anger. He doesn’t want her here. He doesn’t want her to ruin this.

 _“Daichi,”_ she calls, entering the kitchen with Takashi slowly following behind her. _“There you are. I’ve been trying to reach you for weeks now.”_

There’s a moment of silence and then his dad is glaring and Aana has come into the kitchen. “There is a reason I have been ignoring you.”

 _We’re happy,_ Takashi thinks. He’s happy… without her. He doesn’t need a mom… he doesn’t need a mom… Takashi realizes Aana’s music is off…

His mother opens her mouth to respond when she finally notices Aana. _“Who is this? This is a family matter.”_

 _“She is family,”_ Takashi snaps before he can stop himself. He swallows hard when her gaze turns to him. Disinterested… well… she’d never really been interested in him had she? He takes a deep breath and glares back. _“She’s my mom.”_

There is another tense moment of silence before his dad breaks the silence. “Aana can you take Takashi.”

“Dad!” Takashi protests. He won’t move. He won’t let her ruin this. This is his. This is his.

“Takashi,” his dad says, voice dangerously soft. “Go with your mother.”

Takashi scowls. He knows better than to argue with his dad when he uses that tone of voice. Quietly, he lets Aana take him into her arms and lead him upstairs. As they turn the corner on the staircase, he hears his dad say, “You could have sent your lawyer.”

“I don’t have time to hire better,” she says before they’re too far away to hear more.

Hidden away in his parent’s bedroom he pouts and throws himself onto the bed. “I deserve to be down there,” Takashi grumbles arms and legs thrown out across the bed like a starfish.

There’s a moment of silence before Aana climbs onto the bed and Takashi turns his head so his cheek is squished into the floral print bedding to see her better. “Did you mean that?” she asks.

“Mean what?” Takashi grumbles, cheeks fire red. He knows what she means.

“When you called me…” She trails off and when he looks at her he notices her cheeks are red too which makes him feel a little better about all this. “When you said I was your mom.”

His cheeks are burning. He nods.

“Oh,” she says.

There’s another long moment of silence broken only be the slamming of a door downstairs and his father yelling something too muffled to be understood before the door slams again. Then slowly, Aana crawls over and lies down next to him. When she pulls him into a hug, he goes happily.

Six months later, his dad proposes to his mama during a family dinner when his grandma comes to visit; his father asks her to be his wife forever.

Ten months later, after the wedding that took too long to plan, Aana is buckling him into the back seat of their minivan as they get ready to spend their honeymoon at Disney World. His fingernails are freshly painted and the summer sun is glinting off the star clips in his mama’s hair. Takashi asks if she is going to be his mom forever.

Three months later, she adopts him.

 

.

“And so you found your family,” the Prince smiles, clearly enjoying himself.

Shiro thinks he has a rather wonderful smile. “And so I found my family. But… I hadn’t fallen in love with space just yet. See…”

.

The move to North Carolina is more than unexpected, it’s heartbreaking.

The layoffs are no one’s fault. That’s what they told his dad and that’s what his dad told them over dinner six months into Takashi’s second year of middle school. _No one’s fault except for some old, cranky men who’d decided layoffs were best for the company sitting safe and sound around a table with no fear of their jobs,_ Takashi thinks uncharitably.

“So what now,” Mama asks.

“They’re offering me a severance package,” his dad says. “And six months pay for me to find a new job.” His dad takes a moment to take a bite of his food, collecting his thoughts. “I’m not sure if I’ll find work here.”

“Here?” Takashi asks. He’s been deadly silent since his dad announced the situation midway through dinner. He picks lightly at the food on his plate before he sets his fork down.

“In town,” his dad clarifies. He’s not looking at Takashi or Mama. He’s looking at his plate. “Or in the state.”

“In the state,” Takashi repeats dumbly, eye’s widening as the implications slowly start to set in.

His dad sighs and nods. “I’ll try but…”

“We’ll make it work,” Mama promises. She smiles and if it waivers at the edges then that’s okay. Mama’s job can go anywhere as long as she has her laptop. Takashi wonders if she’s worried about him. _Probably._

“It’ll be okay,” Takashi says. He wants to mean it more than he does. He’s scared. He stares down at his half eaten food and then at his dad and then past his dad to the dinning room he’s eaten in since as long as he remembers. “We’ll be okay.”

His dad smiles. Takashi will repeat it as long as he has to until he means it. _They’ll be okay._

.

He breaks the news to Brandon a week later. And then to Lex three days after swearing Brandon to secrecy. They’re at Lex’s place, curled up on the blankets in Lex’s living room because Lex’s dad says they’re too old to be sleeping in the same bedroom now that they’re all twelve.

Takashi had asked Brandon if it was because Lex has to use a training bra now, something she’d proudly shown them after digging through the JC Penney bag she’d gotten earlier that month. Brandon had said probably.

Lex cries, thick fat tears as the reality of it settles in. “Maybe you’ll be close,” she says around sobs. They’ve known each other since kindergarten, before Brandon came in second grade and long before training bras.

Takashi hands her a tissue. “I might not.”

She blows her nose, a deep wet noise. “I’m going to miss you,” she says.

“You’ll skype us everyday,” Brandon promises. “And we’ll come visit and… you can come for holidays…”

“What if I live in California?” Takashi asks. “What if I move to Canada?”

“What if you move two towns over,” Brandon argues. “It might not be too bad. We’ll… we’ll figure it out.”

He takes a deep breath and bites his lip. “I’m scared.”

“Takashi…”

“I’ve never lived anywhere else,” he admits, tears prickling at the edge of his eyes. “I’ve never gone to a different school or made new friends.” He sniffles and wipes at the edge of his eyes.

Slowly Lex brings him in for a hug. Brandon leans in. “I don’t want to leave,” Takashi sobs. “I don’t want to move far away.”

They spend the rest of the night curled up close, legs and arms wrapped around each other like a pile of octopuses. Takashi doesn’t regret it, no matter how much Lex’s dad rants about boundaries the next morning.

.

They move to North Carolina.

.

Takashi tries.

Here’s the thing he will maintain for the rest of his life: he does his best. He is angry and bitter and… and _pissed_. But he keeps it to himself and the many scathing texts he sends Brandon and Lex every few days complaining about the heat and the school and the fact that there are thirty students to a classroom and how none of the teachers seem to care and how none of the people he’s “befriended” are actually real and yeah… He hates it.

He hates North Carolina and Cary and Middle Creek Middle School, home to the mighty Eagles. He hates the apartment his parents get with its small kitchen and small dining room and nonexistent privacy. He hates the neighborhood and the loud neighbors below and above who scream at 3am and 5am every morning on the dot because they have to get to work and screw anybody else who is trying to grab two more hours of sleep.

Most of all he hates how lonely he is. He hates how much he hates his friends, kids he barely knows who he hangs out with in class and on the weekends at the mall and at their place but who he can never quite click with no matter how much effort he puts into it. Kids who talk smack behind each other’s backs, who bite into each other as often as they defend each other.

Friends who are misfits; people he collects because he’s realized slowly over the year that he likes fixing people. “ _Projects,”_ he tells his dad in hushed breath after they finish dropping off Andres and Michael -- twins with an absent dad and an absent-headed mom -- at home. “I want them to get better.”

His dad doesn’t say anything, just takes his hand for a moment before smiling, “You can’t fix people, Takashi.”

Takashi shrugs, staring down the highway as the Top 100s filtered in through the fuzzy radio. “I know.” Intellectually, he knows. Mostly he’s bored.

Brandon says the same thing when Takashi tells him how he helped Heather get ready for the school drama. “You’re too busy fixing their lives.” Brandon says through the shifting screen of the skype call, Lex silent as her dog (new, a chow named Squidward) barks in the background.

Shiro shrugs, looking up from his homework to watch the digital version of himself raise and drop his shoulders, just the slightest delay. “I like helping them.”

Brandon frowns and Lex frowns. “The last thing we need is you developing a martyr complex,” Lex sighs.

Squidward jumps into view and she rubs his ears. Shiro wants a dog. Maybe once they move out of this apartment. “I won’t,” Shiro promises.

“Just… take care of yourself,” Brandon urges. “Have you been sleeping better?”

Shiro nods and then shakes his head and then nodes again. “Ish.”

Lex raises her eyebrows in silent judgement.

Shiro shrugs again. “I’m not that tired lately.” Well… he was rarely tired at night. “I’m fine,” he tries. “I mean… School is stressful.” He might have bitten off more than he can chew taking three honor classes and two clubs but he’d rather die than admit that. He’s in more honor classes then all of his friends. No way is he giving that up.

“Just think about it,” Lex says. They’ve had this conversation before. They’ll have it again. “You need to take care of your mental health too.”

Shiro nods. They change the topic.

.

The thing is he doesn’t tell his parents any of this. He’s sure they know. They’re not dumb. But when his dad asks him if he’s alright, he shrugs. And when his mama asks him if he’s happy, he smiles. This move has been hard on all of them. He knows to suck it up.

.

Summer sneaks up on him. He doesn’t realize it’s April until Brandon asks him when he and Lex can visit; doesn’t realize it’s May until finals role around and he’s cramming to finish.

School comes to an abrupt and unsatisfying finish. He walks away with As and a B in theatre because he just never got the hang of it. As the heat rises -- steadily and then all at once -- he finds himself stuck inside, too hot and too tired to move.

After the fourth time he cancels plans to hang out with his friends, his parents notice.

“Is there anything you want to do?” If it had been anyone but Mama asking, Takashi knew he would have gotten defensive, would have yelled. He can feel his temper simmer in the pit of his stomach, the feeling of ripples in otherwise stagnant water.

He shrugs, bites his tongue, and breathes.

“We could go to the pool,” she offers, already dressed in her bathing suit. “You love the pool.”

Takashi knows he loves the pool, knows he has fond memories of slipping into the cool water in their local YMCA to gather the thrown toys at the bottom of the pit while his Mama floated in the center and his father read his book while lounging on the wicker chair.

Now he looks out their porch doors past the dull beige of the apartment buildings across from them where he knows logically the local pool sits and tries to find the enjoyment in going outside. “No,” he shrugs. “I’d rather not.”

She nods, face turned away. Takashi imagines she must be disappointed. He tries to work up the energy to change his mind. He can’t. He bites his lip and looks out the window again. “You can go.”

She nods and stands, rotating her shoulders. “Well… if you want us… you know where your father and I are?”

Takashi nods. He watches them walk away from the porch window.

It’s not that he dislikes hanging out with his parents. On the contrary sometimes they’re the only people he can stand to hang out with. When his friends become too much and he finds talking to even Brandon and Lex to hard to stomach, he often finds himself curled up against his mama’s side as they watch TV. The noise humming in the background as his parents gossip.

“I just don’t think he knows what he’s doing,” his dad had said after an aid for the contending senator ran halfway through their rewatch of whatever NCIS episode this was. “I like McClain.”

“People say they don’t like the new property taxes,” his mama shrugs, his head moving with her shoulders before he resettles to lean more comfortably against her arm. “I don’t know what I feel.”

“She’s more experienced,” his dad says just as a familiar add for Senator Stella McClain comes on.

“I’m not happy,” Mama argues. “Maybe a change is good.”

“But what if the republicans win?” Dad counters. They both pause and look at the screen. Takashi watches them watch the ad before the familiar face of Gibbs flashes back on the screen, his attention span waning once again.

Mama sighs and pulls Takashi close so she can rest her chin against his head. “I suppose that would be awful.”

.

The day his father announces they’re going on a trip is quiet one. Takashi wakes up late, closer to noon then to morning, and is still shoveling cereal into his mouth through blurry unseeing eyes when his dad walks in carrying a tent.

“Borrowed it from Lindsay,” he grins, setting it down. He’s beaming in a way that Takashi find rather terrifying. “We’re going camping!”

“How exciting!” Mama cries, looking up from her phone to smile wide and blinding. “Where?”

“You know how Lindsay’s daughter is in the Girl scouts?” his dad asks, stepping around the tent to enter the narrow kitchen. Takashi hugs his bowl close and side steps out of the way as his dad reaches for the coffee. “Turns out her troop went camping near these waterfalls and she gave me the address.”

“It’ll be beautiful this time of year,” Mama gushes, turning to smile at Takashi and it’s infectious enough that he manages to smile back. “With all the green leaves.”

“It sounds like fun,” Takashi says and he means it.

That’s how six days later Takashi finds himself in the backseat of his mother’s prius, trunk packed at the ass crack of dawn andhe cereal bar his mama handed him half eaten and held lazily in his hand as they pull out of the driveaway. The familiar sound of Martha the GPS guids them out of the apartment complex and onto the highway as they head for Linville, North Carolina and beyond that to the falls.

When he wakes--he hadn’t realized he’d fallen asleep--his parents are listening to NPR and talking quietly to themselves in the front. The sun has finally made its way into the sky, the hazy yellow cutting across an otherwise idyllic blue. It’s quiet. Warm. He props his head up on his arms as he stretches out across the back seat and cranes his neck back to make out the sight of airplanes and birds spotted black in the sky, the view only broken by the occasional green highway sign.

Finally, Mama notices he’s awake when they pull into the parking lot of a rest stop for a much needed bathroom break. “You want anything?” she asks when Takashi manages to crawl his way out of the car to stretch, back actually cracking.

He looks at the yellow and brown building with its variety of restaurant names plastered on the front and shrugs. “Starbucks?”

They’re waiting for his dad by the side of the car, green tea frappuccinos in hand, watching the skyline when she says, “I’m glad you came.”

He takes a sip of his drink and looks out onto the expanse of the parking lot where other families and other children are settling into their cars and then out onto the semi-empty highway and then even beyond that to the horizon and the green-gray mountains in the distance. “I’m glad I came too.”

.

They arrive just as the last spot by the waterfall is claimed. There is a moment of disappointment as Takashi climbs out of the car, boots crunching against the gravel driveway. He looks to the beautiful whites and blues of the rushing water and the variety of tents pitched along the lake’s edge and wonders, bitterly, if he shouldn’t have come.

“He did say there was a more secluded area further into the forest,” his dad says, lifting one of the larger packs onto his back as Mama pulls the cooler out of the trunk. Takashi has been saddled with all the sleeping bags and his personal backpack. “That or we can camp around here.”

Takashi looks away from the falls and down the gravel road to where a few other, smaller tents are pitched and shakes his head. If he wanted a driveway he could have stayed home. “Let’s try going in deeper,” he says.

The forest is huge: green on green on green reaching high over their heads and occasionally opening up onto occupied tent grounds. The path twists and turns. It isn’t long before they’re swallowed whole and Takashi can no longer see the road or hear the falls. Here it is like an alien planet. No houses, no cars. No people, not really. Just trees and trees and tents.

Fifteen minutes later they find it: a post in the dirt marked 43 and a large open patch of dirt circled in rock along the river side. Takashi’s shoulders are burning where the straps of his backpack are cutting into his shoulders and he shrugs in an attempt to adjust as his parents scoop out the territory.

The whole place is covered in broken dusty leaves, the barest of grass forcing its way through the dirt and above the leaves to crumble under his boots. The space isn’t that big, just big enough for them. But so very different from their apartment. The trees open up along the river; the sun running through the leaves to scatter onto the water. Takashi drops his pack just before the earth dips down into the crystal clear river. The river near there house is different -- dull and gray, a trickle compared to this rush of water. The river bed is a mosaic of orange and gray and brown stones and home to a variety of turtles. He picks up a stick and pokes a stone near a turtle and watches them scatter.

“Don’t fall in,” Mama calls from her place by the treeline.

“Help me pitch the tent,” Dad reminds him from where he’s pulled the poles from their nylon bag.

The ground is soft where he drives the nails into the dirt and they worry it won't be strong enough. But it holds for now. As he helps his father straighten the poles for the large four person tent, his mama sets up the fire and their makeshift kitchen. They’d gone all out. Battery powered camping stove, new lighters, tinders, fire starters. Easy-to-make-just-add-water food packets. Takashi isn’t sure if they were there for two days or six months but either way it had been fun wandering through the Dicks Sportings Good and Army Surplus store and discovering the variety of easy-to-learn, easy-to-do camping gear available.

(It might also have been Takashi’s fault for the variety of food they had. He’d been insistent on trying everything and too joyous for his Mama and Dad to argue.)

When they’re done, Takashi helps pick out the leaves caught in his mother’s hair as she settles onto the bench to read, his dad a few feet away smoking his single cigarette (Mama had limited him to one a day upon threat of couch). That’s when he notices it: the birds and the insects and the frogs. The sound of wind through the trees, the groans of branches. He had expected it to be quieter.

When he’s allowed--once his parents want some time alone--he wanders off, making sure to keep to the trail. The alien feeling stays even as he finds more people. The camp grounds are crowded even back here, a good walk from the falls. Most are families, but one tent is small and home to an older man and his large mutt of a dog.

“Brutus,” the man smiles, ruffling the dog’s fur so his ears flop up and down as its stupid tongue hangs lopsided out of its mouth. “He’s a big fella. Almost as old as me.”

Takashi holds out his hand and asks without speaking if he can pet.

“He likes playing catch,” the man says once Brutus is done sniffing and slobbering all over his hand. He hands Takashi a well-loved red ball.

That’s how his mother finds him a few hours later. Dirt covered and sweaty and panting as he chases a large brown dog up and down the forest path, red ball bouncing back and forth on the horizon. At one point, he’d fallen down and skinned his knee, Brutus a little more excitable than he’d anticipated and far heavier than he thought.

He’d spent a moment like that, back digging into the dirt and sticks as Brutus laid out on top of him. Both of their chests heaving as Takashi held onto the ball--a bright tangible red against an otherwise green, green world--like a lifeline.

“Are you alright, son?” the man had asked (Takashi had never learnt his name. To him, in that moment, he was no more than an extension of Brutus--the man who housed the dog).

Takashi had laughed and laughed and laughed as he lay. “Yeah! Yeah… I’m… I’m alright.”

.

Night comes too soon and Takashi finds himself back at the campsite in front of an open roaring fire, roasting marshmallows as his dad’s old boombox plays ABBA’s Best Hits on low from a log beside him.

“I just don’t understand what I’m doing wrong,” Mama complains as Dad fiddles with the switches and dials on the stove. “We just got it.”

His dad sighs and sets the battery-powered metal stove on the ground and looks somewhat longingly at the meals Mama had grabbed from the cooler. “Guess we’re eating the MREs instead.”

There is something magical, Takashi decides, fingers sticky with marshmallow and chocolate, about MREs. There’s something too satisfying about being able to add just water to a meal. Mama has managed to rig up a precariously placed pot by the fire to heat water for hot cocoa and the ABBA album is being switched out for Beyonce, the music still just soft enough not to mask the echo of crickets.

Mama manages to spill some of her dinner down her shirt as always. Takashi launches into a story about school and Mama tells him a story about the time she and Dad got stuck in a mall after hours. Dad laughs hard enough he falls off his log and scatters the bunnies in the bushes. Takashi spends far too much of his storage data snapping photos around the fire for his Instagram. When they’re done eating and Takashi’s side hurts from laughing and he’s eaten six more s’mores and Mama has brought out the gin and tonic, he heads to the river to wash his hands because she can’t open the bottle and Dad is still laughing too hard to be useful.

That’s when he sees it. Stars. Hundreds and hundreds of stars scattered across the sky broken by strips of white and orange and swirls of purple: the bands of the milky way. “Wow.”

“Beautiful isn’t it?”

Takashi nods as he stares up at the sky with wide unblinking eyes. “I’ve never seen this before.”

“I feel in love with Space like this,” Mama says, sitting down next to him. “Looking up at the stars and wondering what else was out there.”

 

 

 

Dad sits down next to her and Takashi can hear the steady crackle of the fire, the bugs, and the frogs. The sound of wind and water. It’s beautiful. In this moment, as his jeans get soaked with the splash of river water and the mud slowly sticks to his ass, he decides it’s beautiful.

“It’s impossible to live in a house with you without loving Space,” Takashi admits, leaning closer until his head rests against her shoulder. “But… I think I see why you could dedicate your life to something like that.”

His dad laughs and whispers something. She laughs and hit his arm and then shakes her head. Takashi doesn’t want to know. “Our next goal is Pluto you know.”

“Pluto?”

She nods. “You can’t see it right now. Not even with a telescope. But that’s the goal. My team is currently constructing an engine that should propel us to pluto and the edge of our solar system.”

“What would we learn there?”  

“Everything,” she breaths and there is so much joy in her statement, so much pride. For a moment Takashi is bitter but then he is envious. What does he have that makes him that happy? That proud? What does he have to look forward to?

He thinks back to this last year (these last few months) and then looks to the future and the idea of going back to his school and his “friends.” His grimaces, stomach souring. He’d rather die. It’s a bleak thought but so is the idea: to go to a school he hates with people he hates to achieve a future he does not know or potentially want.

What does he want to do?

“The ice of pluto we theorize holds proof of how the universe began and answers to what lies beyond our borders.”

“Aliens,” his dad mock whispers.

Mama rolls her eyes, but she’s still smiling. Takashi wants to be that passionate. Takashi wants to…

“We’ve already found life under the ice of Europa. We’ve already found proof of new elements and minerals on Mars completely foreign to Earth(1).” She sighs and looks up at the stars. “Imagine what we’ll find on Pluto.”

“Maybe I’ll go,” Takashi mumbles and it’s a baby of an idea but it’s there. He wants that happiness. He wants that pride and that passion and that drive. Space… Space could be… “Maybe one day I could see it all.”

And then his father says, “I bet you could,” without pause. “I can see it. Mother and son discovering the universe and exploring the unknown. Daring to go where no man has gone before.”

Mama slinging an arm around his shoulder. “I could see it: my perfect pilot!” She squeezes him close and turns to his dad, “ And it’s ‘to boldly go where no man has gone before.’”

As his parents start to squabble, Takashi turns his attention up and up to the stars and smiles.

It’s just a thought… just an idea. But it’s a start.

.

“After that I looked into it: what it would take to become a space explorer. I transferred to a different school and met some amazing people. I wanted to explore space because my mama loved space and I wanted to love something as much as she did...” Takashi sighs. He’s unfortunately sober now. The sting in his eyes growing as he blinks back tears. “I wanted to take my mother’s ship to the corners of our solar system and see the stars up close.”

The prince says nothing. The fire had long gone down as Shiro had woven his tale. Now he turns back and relights the embers with kindles as long as Shiro fights to collect himself.

When he speaks again it's in a broken whisper, voice heavy. “She died.” He takes a deep breath and remembers the moment Keith had told him on the Mamora base all those months ago, guilt heavy on his shoulders from having hidden it for so long. Lance was just starting to recover from his ordeal with the Sisterhood. Shiro hadn’t had the time to think about it. Not really. “She died that year I was captured by the Galra.”

The Prince’s gaze feels heavy on his face. He wipes his cheeks softly with the back of his hand. “I am sorry for your loss.”

Shiro nods, sniffling pathetically. “Keith said she died of heartbreak a week after I was declared dead.” He laughs and it is empty. “She died because she thought I had died.”

He doesn’t say, _I wish I had_ . He doesn’t say, _I wish I’d never gone to space._

The Prince shifts, uncertain. And Shiro remembers himself. He clears his throat, “My apologies.”

The Prince shakes his head, smiles and moves to settle himself against Shiro’s side. With gentle pressure, he slowly repositions Shiro until Shiro’s head is nestled safely in his lap. “Please, tell me more about her.”

“I…”

“She sounds like an incredible human,” the Prince continues. When Shiro looks uncertain, he places a hand over Shiro’s eyes and adds. “Let me grieve with you.”

After a moment, Shiro speaks. “When I was 14…”

**Author's Note:**

> AHHHH!!! Done! 7 months of work accumulating in the posting of this fic today!! I hope you all love it as much as I do!! 
> 
> Please let me know what you think!
> 
> Also, I just want to take a moment to thank everyone who participated in the Shiro Big Bang. It was a ton of fun working with everyone! I hope you all had as much fun as I did and that the event ran smoothly for you!!
> 
> Shoutout to my **AMAZING** artists and beta who worked so hard on this project and helped me make the best story possible!  
>  Artists: [ThisLovelyMaelStrom ](http://thislovelymaelstrom.tumblr.com/)|| [Cupcakeismynamebitchez](http://cupcakeismynamebitchez.tumblr.com/)  
> Beta: [Onoheiwa](https://onoheiwa.tumblr.com/)  
> Title Inspo: [Saturn by Sleeping at Last](https://youtu.be/dzNvk80XY9s%20%20Saturn%20by%20Sleeping%20At%20Last</p>)


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